Chapter VI: Letters to Darwin and Others (2)

If you suppose everything is paralyzed and desolate here, and the country greatly put back, read a very sensible letter of an Englishman in the “Spectator” of June 7. It is very just and true. We shall recuperate fast enough, and be better off than ever, as much prosperity as is good for us, and more solid, more independent, more self-contained, which is our great desideratum. Free trade be blowed; we must needs have high duties on imports, and it is better that we should. By these and by direct taxes--the tax-bill just passed--we shall have to pay over largely. Very well.

Just at present our prospects (viz., evening of July 3) are looking badly enough. McClellan has clearly been overmatched and driven to the wall, after very obstinate fighting, with very heavy loss on both sides. Whether it is retrievable with reinforcements, or whether the whole campaign has to be begun again against Richmond, is not yet clear. Anyway we have got to put shoulder to the wheel anew, and it may be done, we suppose, more easily and far more promptly than last year. All we ask is that Europe shall let us alone.

Enough for to-day.

PROVIDENCE, R. I., July 29, 1862.

No more news in the orchids line. I am making two or three days of holiday, and yesterday I found a few specimens of Gymnadenia tridentata. But the flowers are too small to examine well with a hand lens. If they keep, I will take them back to Cambridge in a day or two and see what to make of them....

As to the country, you will see by this time that we have not the least idea of abandoning the struggle. We have learned only that there is no use trying any longer to pick up our eggs gently, very careful not to break any. The South forces us at length to do what it would have been more humane to have done from the first, i. e., to act with vigor, not to say rigor.

We shall be complained of for our savageness, no doubt, whereas we feel that our error has been all the other way. But the independence, the total indifference to English feeling which you recommended last year, has come at length; now we care nothing what Mrs. Grundy says.

CAMBRIDGE, September 22, 1862.

Your pleasant epistles of August 21 and September 4 are to be acknowledged, with thanks. But I have nothing in particular to communicate, except our hearty congratulations that your boy and Mrs. Darwin are recovering so well.

Tell Leonard that I was pleased both with his attention in writing and with the ocular proof of his convalescence in his being able so soon to use a pen. His requests shall be kept in view; the five-cent stamp I send now; dare say I shall sometime pick up the thirty and ninety, though I never saw the latter, nor the twelve, twenty, and twenty-four on envelopes (the twenty-four cent he must have already, as it is often used on my envelopes to you).

Bravo for Horace, whose illustration of Natural Selection as to the adders is capital. A chip of the old block, he evidently is.

I told you that Rothrock had gone to the war, and perhaps has already been under fire; probably not. I had intended that next spring he should do up Houstonia more perfectly, and work up this and some related matters for his thesis when he comes up for examination. But all this is broken up by his enlistment....

I have been lazy about all my writing, working all day at dry and dull systematic botany, which you anathematize. But if I get time to turn it over, I will say a few words on the last chapter of your Orchid book. But it opens up a knotty sort of question about accident or design, which one does not care to meddle with much until one can feel his way further than I can.

October 4, 1862.

I have just been reading Max Müller’s lecture on the Science of Language with much interest. But perhaps what has interested me most is, after all, his perfect appreciation and happy use of Natural Selection, and the very complete analogy between diversification of species and diversification of language. I can hardly think of any publication which in England could be more useful to your cause than this volume is, or should be. I see also with what great effect you may use it in our occasional discussion about design; indeed I hardly see how to avoid conclusion adverse to special design, though I think I see indications of a way out.

Depend on it, Max Müller will be of real service to you.

October 13.

I have been so much occupied that I deferred to the last moment to write out my second notice of your Orchid book for “Silliman’s Journal.” I wrote out Saturday evening what I could, and to-day have finished and sent off my manuscript to New Haven. The greater part consists of a record of some of my observations last summer, very hurriedly penned, and sent off. I trust you will be pleased, and will think that my little contributions cannot be better hatched than under your wings.

I hope that my young correspondent is fast recovering strength. Tell him that I have no more stamps for him yet, but shall pick up his desiderata one of these days.

I have some nice live roots of Cypripedium, two or three species to send you, and mean to send Mitchella.

How Hooker does praise up your book, in the “Gardener’s Chronicle!”

CAMBRIDGE, November 10, 1862.

It is refreshing to me that you find the special correspondent of the “Times” detestable.

Your comments upon our affairs always show such a good spirit that you need not fear even my wife’s “indignation.”

We are sorry that you suffer in England; but you must blame the rebels for it, not us, and your Manchester people should have looked earlier to India for cotton.

You don’t see, as you would if here, the total impossibility of coming to any terms of peace with the South, based on their independence. Before that can be they or we must be thoroughly beaten. You can’t be expected to see too, what seems plain to me, that you English would give us no end of trouble if we attempt a piecemeal existence. We must be strong enough to keep any Old-World power at bay. Then we shall behave pretty well, on the whole; surely so when the North is dominant and is fairly treated. “Seizing on Canada.” What do we want of Canada? When the South was aggressive and making slave States we often looked to the peaceful acquisition of Canada as desirable, as a counterpoise. But when we had “changed all that,”--and it is changed, and slavery limited, past all doubt, however the combat ends,--we no longer have use or need of Canada. If we get set up again, we have work enough at home, and our hands full for years; we shall be strong for defense, but weak for aggression. The ill-feeling to England will die out when we are well able to defend ourselves and our home interests.

It does seem that all England wishes us to be weak and divided; perhaps that is good national policy. But the more that is so, the more necessary it is for us to vindicate our integrity, at whatever cost. Let us have it out now, even at the cost of ten times what it has cost so far.

I never thought anything of American institutions for England. Aristocracy is a natural and needful appendage to monarchy. You work out your own type, and you will liberalize fast enough, and leave us to do ours. We’ll make it do, with some jangling.

I wish we could be shut up, like the Japanese of old, for ten or twenty years, only with a weekly mail from you and Dr. Hooker. Well, well!

Ever yours cordially, ASA GRAY.

November 24.

About Max Müller; surely you can’t wonder that the attempt to account for the “first origin of language,” or of anything else, should be the “least satisfactory.”

The use that I fancied could be made of Max Müller’s book, or rather of the history of language, is something more than illustration, but only a little more; that is, you may point to analogies of development and diversification of language, of no value at all in evidence in support of your theory, but good and pertinent as rebutting objections urged against it.

Bishop Colenso’s book will make a noise in England; indeed, I have only read the notice in the “Athenæum.”

You detest the spirit of the “Times” quoad U. S. The “Athenæum” is just as bad in its little penny-trumpet way, every chance it can get, from the first. Can you be much surprised that we return dislike with interest? But we are pleased to find there are sensible and fair writers, such as Cairnes and Mill.

No, dear Darwin, we don’t scorn your joining in the prayer that we daily offer that “God would help our poor country,” and I know and appreciate your honest and right feeling.

I see also, from the English papers I read, how you must picture us as in the extreme of turmoil and confusion and chaos. But if you were here, you would open your eyes to see everything going on quietly, hopefully, and comfortably as possible. I suppose we do not appreciate our miseries. We accept our misfortunes and adversities, but mean to retrieve them, and would sink all that we have before giving up. We work hard, and persevere, and expect to come out all right, to lay the foundations of a better future, no matter if they be laid in suffering. That will not hurt us now, and may bring great good hereafter.

I never saw, and have scarcely heard of, Miss Cooper’s book you ask after. She is the daughter of the late J. Fenimore Cooper, the novelist. The village she describes must be Cooperstown, New York, in the county adjacent to that in which I was brought up,--a region which, every time I visit it, I say it is the fairest of lands, and the people the happiest.

Oh, as to the weeds; Mrs. Gray says she allows that our weeds give up to yours. Ours are modest, woodland, retiring things, and no match for the intrusive, pretentious, self-asserting foreigners. But I send you seeds of one native weed which, corrupted by bad company, is as nasty and troublesome as any I know, namely, Sicyos angulatus; also of a more genteel Cucurbitacea, Echinocystis lobata (the larger seeds). Upon these, especially upon the first, I made my observation of tendrils coiling to the touch. Put the seeds directly into the ground; they will come up in spring, in moist garden soil.

My observations were made on a warm, sunny day. I doubt if you have warmth and sunshine enough in England to get up a sensible movement.

My note about them is in “Proceedings of the American Academy,” iv., p. 98, reprinted in “Silliman’s Journal,” March, 1859, p. 277. I must own that upon casually taking them up since, I never have obtained such very good results as upon two days of August, 1858.

Upon gourds affecting each other’s fruits, I have made no observations at all. I have only referred to that, as a well-known thing, at least, of common repute here, and then referred to maize, where the soft sweet-corn, when fertilized by hard yellow-corn, the grain so fertilized takes the character of the fertilizer. My note about it is in Academy “Proceedings,” vol. iv., I think. You have the volumes (which I have not in reach now), and can find it by the index. It does not amount to much. Nothing on maize I know of except Bonafous’ folio volume. I am going to get and send you grains of four or five sorts of maize. About the involucrate form, I wrote in my last.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

CAMBRIDGE, 14th October, 1862.

DEAR ENGELMANN,--Never mind turmoil. It will come out right. I go against the abolition wing, but support the President in his Proclamation.

If the rebels continue obstinate, that is only a question of time. Of that, as a military measure, and of the expediency, the President of the United States is the sole judge, and in time of war he is to be supported heartily. I myself do not see clearly that the time had come. But I have a notion that the President knows better than I.

As you like Judge Parker, I will send you an article written before the Proclamation came out. You will like it, all but the last part, the bitter end. I would continue the war, if necessary, to the sweeping of all rebeldom bare. And that appears to be the sober sentiment of the country.

If Judge Parker, etc., had let their convention alone, we would have ousted Sumner for a wiser man. But now I fear that Sumner will be returned to the Senate.

You had better in Missouri abolish slavery and take United States bonds in indemnity. You will never do better.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

October 13, 1862.

Both Torrey and Eaton speak of having your photograph. You cut me, I suppose, because I am such a poor correspondent! I am afraid I deserve it, but what can a poor fellow do in such times as these?...

A fruit, one of a dozen ripened here this season in the Garden, has such a tropical look and taste that it reminded me of you. It is Asimina triloba! Tastes like a rich custard into which a piece of scented soap has fallen....

General Stuart with his cavalry has been cutting all round McClellan’s army again. Next time, I expect they will make a circuit as far round as Boston, or at least Connecticut, and carry off the horses. They are more in earnest than we are; but we shall use them up at length.

November 14.

Here I was this afternoon, moiling over your plants, copying out Grisebach’s manuscripts for the printer (for the printer won’t touch the Dutchy-looking thing; and besides, I have additions to make, etc.), when I just happened to remember that to-morrow is Havana mail, and that I was by all means to write to you to-day. There is still time, so here goes.

First, can’t you make some arrangement, while you are at this end of Cuba, to receive a Yankee newspaper by mail; say to the address of Don José Blain, or some Havana address. If you can arrange it that it is not stopped, I will send you papers regularly; say the little “Boston Herald,” small, soon read, democratic, patriotic, or others, from time to time....

As to collecting still, I should say, Yes, go on, in a gradual and cheap way, i. e., do not make very heavy outlays, as long as you are in the country; at least till next summer. For we cannot get the war done until late next spring (except in Texas).

If you can do as much for western as for eastern Cuba, it will be a good thing....

Meanwhile I have money enough for you, if you can only get it....

But how can you get it at present rates? Or how can I get it to you? If greenbacks would pass there as here, it would be easy enough.

Is there not some Yankee product that I could ship to you that Blain or Lescaille wants, sewing-machines, agricultural implements, chairs? So we might save the loss on exchange. I will send you anything, from a mouse-trap to a wheelbarrow!

You have a letter from me which must have reached you soon after yours of October 25, saying that my last was eighty-five days old! Indeed, you ought to have had it then....

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

January 27, 1863.

I have been far too busy to write letters; have been interrupted, too, by visitors, etc....

You “wish to heaven the North did not hate us so.” We equally wish the English did not hate us so. Perhaps we exaggerate the ill will in England against us. You certainly over-estimate that of the United States against England, which an influential part of your press exaggerates and incites for the worst purposes. But, after all, after the first flurry, we think and say very little about you, and shall live in peace with you, if you will let us. There should have been, and might have been, the most thorough good will between us. I do not think it is all our fault that it is not so.

In reply to your question:--

If oak and beech had large, colored corolla, etc., I know of no reason why it would be reckoned a low form, but the contrary, quite. But we have no basis for high or low in any class, say, dicotyledons, except perfection of development or the contrary in the floral organs, and even the envelopes; and as we know these may be reduced to any degree in any order or group, we have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a commonwealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.

I have just read De Candolle’s paper on oaks and species, and origin. Well, he has got on about as far towards you as I have. It is clear enough that, as I thought at first, derivation of species is to be the word, and natural selection admitted. The only question is, whether this is enough.

Ever your attached friend, A. GRAY.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, February 16, 1863.

I am disposed to join issue with you on the question of Linnæus’ definition of species. I have long pondered your discussion of the subject in “Géographie Botanique,” and still think, on the supposition of the fixity of species (which Linnæus of course had in view), that between “community of descent” and “likeness,” the former and not the latter is the fundamental conception in the idea of species. We may test this by inquiring whether of the two can be derived from the other. The likeness, I suppose, is the consequence of the community of descent. But, then, as the likeness is a thing of degrees, and, according to present probabilities, species may have only a relative and temporary fixity, your view will after all have the advantage; and the question of species will come to be metaphysical or logical, rather than natural-historical. The worst of all is that there will remain no objective basis or standard; and species will be what each naturalist thinks best so to consider!

I am pleased to know that the view of my article on the “Memoirs”[53] is well received by you. Readable articles are very needful, when they can be had, for a journal which, like Silliman’s, cannot exist without popular support. I promised an article of sixteen pages of this character; but I intended to enlarge more at the close upon the genius and influence of your father, and cite your parallel with Linnæus as portrayed by Fabricius. But I found that my pages were filled before I was aware of it, and I had to cut short, much too curtly. It left me with a somehow dissatisfied feeling. All your remarks about the difference between the profound and the prolific botanists, I agree to; and I think that both Linnæus and De Candolle had as much genius as Robert Brown....

Well, as to origin of species, you have now gone just about as far as I have, in Darwinian direction, and both of us have been led step by step by the facts and probabilities, and have not jumped at conclusions.

I shall be curious to see Mme. Royer’s book; Darwin has spoken of her.

Under my hearty congratulations of Darwin for his striking contributions to teleology, there is a vein of petite malice, from my knowing well that he rejects the idea of design, while all the while he is bringing out the neatest illustrations of it!

Did time allow, I should like to write at large upon these enticing topics....

TO W. J. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, March 16, 1863.

I received this morning a letter from William Short, announcing to me the death of his lamented father, our excellent friend, Dr. C. W. Short, of Louisville, Kentucky, one of our oldest botanists, and one of the best of men and kindest of friends. He died on the 7th inst., of a typhoid fever, supervening on a severe cold.

I feel the loss very much. Although we never met, he was one of my most valued friends....

He always remembered his former correspondence with you with great interest, and was particularly pleased when, in my letter, I could give him news of you.

His herbarium, upon which he bestowed great pains and considerable expense, is conditionally bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution.

Our botanical Nestor is Dr. Darlington. A few months since I had a letter from him written in as firm a hand as ever; but now he is prostrated by paralysis, which, however, leaves his mind clear. But he cannot remain much longer with us. Short and Darlington were both hearty and true Christian gentlemen.

April 28, 1863.

Your kind letter of the 6th inst. and the photograph were received with more gratification than I can well express. Both your handwriting and your _carte de visite_ show you to be well and strong, and, please God, long may you so continue.

Your face looks fuller than a dozen years ago, and a bit older, it may be, but it recalls your friendly and kindly expression, and is the best substitute I can have for not seeing you again.

What I wrote of our Nestor, Dr. Darlington, as about to be removed from us, has come to pass. The good old man died, after much suffering from a paralysis, on Wednesday last, the 22d, as a newspaper slip has apprised me. He had reached the age of eighty-one. Unless we continue to rank Dr. Bigelow among the botanists, Dr. Torrey, and even myself, now count among the most advanced in age.

I am most happy to tell you that Dr. Torrey, whom I lately saw in New York, and who last week looked in upon us here for a day, is quite well.

Mrs. Greene is cheerful and busy in carrying out her husband’s bequest and desires, in favor of the Boston Natural History Society, to whom he left his herbarium and botanical library.

By Professor George Bond, a colleague and neighbor of mine, our distinguished astronomer, and a most worthy, amiable, and modest person, whom I hope you may see, I sent out to you a photograph of F. A. Michaux and of Adrien de Jussieu, which I thought you might like, and which I have just had made from daguerreotypes which I induced them to sit for in Paris in 1851. Bond will be delighted to see Kew again with its vast improvements.

Ever, dear Sir William, yours affectionately,

ASA GRAY.

TO MRS. THOMAS P. JAMES.

CAMBRIDGE, April 30, 1863.

I had sent some while ago word to Miss Morris that I had a single seedling Darlingtonia, and should like to know if Dr. Darlington was in condition to be interested in it. But she thought the time had passed for that.

His memory will long be venerated. We, at least, shall not forget him.

Twenty years ago he had sent to me his selected epitaph, and had discussed it. It is natural and characteristic. I should take an interest in seeing such an inscription on his tombstone. But, entre nous, I should not fancy such an one on my own. I should select rather some simple line of Holy Writ, expressive of the Christian trust and faith, such as our friend died in.

I had lately been writing brief notices of several of our botanists, deceased, for the May number of “Silliman’s Journal” (as you see, I mail a copy just received); and at the time I felt that they probably would not be published before there would be another and more distinguished name to add.

I shall not wait for the year to come round, but I hope to draw up a brief tribute to his memory for the July number of “Silliman’s Journal.” So I should be much obliged to you for the dates and other particulars you kindly offer to furnish. I hope that autobiography which you are so fortunate as to possess is of such a character that it may be printed, and that you will give it along with a little memoir from your own pen. It will be quite in your way, and I would rather you should do it than any one else....

By the way, I may as well mention that Dr. Darlington told me that certain letters, etc., of Baldwin’s, which he could not print, as they were severe on Nuttall, should come into my possession after his own death. You will probably know if any bundle of papers is left, directed to my charge.

TO CHARLES DARWIN.

CAMBRIDGE, March 22, 1863.

MY DEAR DARWIN,--Argyle’s article on the Supernatural, to which you called my attention a long while ago, I never happened to see till to-day, when I have read it through. It is quite clever, not deep, but clear, and I think useful. I see no occasion for finding fault with him, except in his attempts now and then to direct a little odium against you, which is unhandsome, for his main points are those I hammered out in the “Atlantic,” etc.; indeed I see signs of his having read the same. But it is hardly fair of him, after expressing his complete conviction that where the operation of natural causes can be clearly traced, the implication of design, upon its appropriate evidence, is not thereby rendered less certain or less convincing, to go on to speak of derivation-doctrine in a way that implies the contrary.

Of course we believers in real design make the most of your “frank” and natural terms, “contrivance, purpose,” etc., and pooh-pooh your endeavors to resolve such contrivances into necessary results of certain physical processes, and make fun of the race between long noses and long nectaries!

March 23.

Dr. Wyman,[54] who is a sharp fellow, tells me that, on the authority of the historian Prescott, the Incas of Peru, for no one knows how long, married their sisters, to keep the perfect purity of the blood. Query: How did this strong case of close-breeding operate? Did they run out thereby? Wyman thinks there is no evidence of it.

If it is true, and the Incas stood it for a long course of generations, you must look to it, for it will bear hard against your theory of the necessity of crossing. If they run out, you will have a good case.

April 11.

You see that, at length, the thing is nearly done, and, to use the expression here, rebeldom is “gone up.”

You have long seen, I suppose, that I was right in saying there was but one possible end to the war; also that the continuance for a time or abolition of slavery depended simply on the rebels,--that if they obstinately and persistently resisted, slavery was thereby doomed.

It has been a long, weary, and trying work. But the country has had the needed patience and nerve, and the thing is done, once for all, at great cost, but to immense and enduring advantage.

You are the only Britisher I ever write to on this subject, and, in fact, for whose opinions about our country I care at all.

So I hasten to rejoice with you over the beginning of the end.

April 20.

You asked me to tell you, when I had read it, what I thought of Sir Charles Lyell’s book.[55] I have only to-day finished the perusal of the copy he kindly sent me, that is, all but half of the matter on glacial period, which I reserve till I can read it more attentively. Throughout it is a very interesting and to me a very satisfactory book. It is three books: 1. A capital résumé and examination of what we knew about the evidence of antiquity of man; no evidence we had not read of before, but very clearly presented, of course.

2. A treatise on the glacial period. Out of this I have much to learn, and must read it all again carefully; of a part I have not yet cut the leaves.

3. On transmutation matters. That part of the book I can judge somewhat of, and I declare it first-rate. It is just about what I expected, and is characteristic of the man. I think that you, and Hooker, are unreasonable in complaining of Lyell that he does not come out “flat-footed,” as we say, as an advocate of natural-selection transmutation. For, 1st, it is evident that though inclined strongly towards it he is by no means satisfied that natural selection will do all the work you put upon it. 2d, he very plainly implies nearly all you would have him say. And, 3d, he serves your cause (supposing it to be well-founded) quite as effectually, perhaps, by his guarded position, by his keeping the position of a judge rather than of an advocate, and by considering still the case as not yet ripe for a decision.

Very skillfully, too, has he presented the case of transmutation so as to commend it, as much as possible, to us orthodox people. (Huxley, I suppose, whose two books I have not seen, would put it in a way to frighten us off.) Indeed, I think he has shown remarkable judgment and taste, and will have much success in disarming prejudice. And this is all you could ask.

The chapter on language makes the points I supposed would be made, or some of them, but only dips in, leaving more to be said. But this is rather ticklish ground, for, if we are not careful here, you would get the better of us in this field quoad design.

If I had got the book three or four weeks earlier I should have worked in some notice of the last chapter into my review of De Candolle, etc., on Species, in the May number of “Silliman’s Journal.”

Now please do not think of being ill this spring, and passing all your valuable time, wasting it, at a water-cure.

I have really, as you see, nothing special to write of this week, and no time to read what I have hurriedly penned.

May 26.

Your letter on heterogeny is keen and good; Owen’s rejoinder ingenious. But his dissent from your well-put claims of natural selection to attention and regard is good for nothing except on the admission of the view that species are somehow derived genealogically; and this I judge, from various of Owen’s statements, that he really in his heart believes to be the case, and was (as I long ago intimated my suspicions) hunting about for some system of derivation, when your book came down upon him like a thunderclap.

Wyman, here, is greatly pleased with Huxley’s book on man’s place in nature. I have not even seen it.

Did you ever notice how prettily Iris is arranged for cross-fertilizing by bees, etc.?

Your Linum paper has long been here. But I have actually not had time to read it. I might have glanced at it. But I find it best to read only when I can do so with some attention.

Phyllotaxis: I have no notion in the world why the angular divergences should be of that series of numbers and not of others. Opposite leaves give (decussating) the angles. My puzzle has been to account for this system in cycles in leaves running into the system of decussating whorls in flowers (usually, almost universally). You will see the question by comparing in my “Botanical Text-Book” (not “Lessons”), pp. 236, 237, with chapter v., section 1; and you see I have drawn an illustration from it apropos to Falconer’s remark. But explaining the obscure by the obscure does not amount to much.

As to national affairs, how quarrelsome you English are. Here are we, cool and quietly occupied with our little affairs, never dreaming of harm from you, and your people are trying their prettiest to pick a quarrel with us, because we do what Historicus says the English have always done and will do again when the time comes, having Lord Stowell to back them! Tell me, who is Historicus in the “Times”? An able and most influential person evidently.

The government of England is now showing sense. Do not wonder that some wild talk is given to the air in this rough country, after what you have heard in the House of Commons, and read in the “Times,” etc. Am afraid we shall not like each other for a good while--the nations. But all shows I was right. We must carry out our little job, and hold the United States complete and develop material strength at any cost, or we could not live without eating more dirt than we like.

Boasting nonsense is pretty well knocked out of us by severe discipline and sad reverses, but the determination is stronger than ever.

Time up and paper full. Forgive my maundering, and believe me to be,

Ever your affectionate, A. GRAY.

June, [1863].

I am kept distractingly busy, so look for nothing of any use from me yet awhile.

Your Ohio case of law against marrying of cousins, I put to my neighbor, Professor Parsons, who had it looked up. He tells me there is no such law at all on the Ohio statute books, nor is there a trace of any law on the subject to be found in the laws of any State in the United States. He doubts if there can really be any statistics which tell on the point, because, first, the marriage of first cousins is a rare thing in this country; second, the United States decennial censuses do not afford any information on the matter; third, nor any of the [state] censuses that he knows of.

Pray, don’t run mad over Phyllotaxis! I can’t save you, I am sure.

George’s “Converging Sines” is the same, perhaps, as what Bravais was after. His memoir may help you (see “Botanical Text-Book,” p. 141, par. 248); or, if you want something thoroughly mathematical, consult Neumann, of Berlin, in some paper, which I have no reference to....

I am sorry you do not give a better account of yourself. Be careful and do not work too hard.

July 7.

My last from you is May 31.

I had arranged to reprint most of Bates on Mimetic Analogy in “Silliman’s Journal,” but my long review of A. de Candolle crowded it out. I then thought of a brief abstract, but have had no time to prepare it. I wrote remarks and arranged long extracts of your Linum paper, and insisted on it for the July number of “Silliman’s Journal.” But it, too, was laid over, not for anything I had, for I have little in the July number.

I like and agree to your remark that, in Bates’s Geographical Varieties, etc., we get about as near to seeing a species made as we are ever likely to get; and so believing, I think your gradual way more likely than Heer’s jumps.

Apropos to Heer, you ask me if it is not impossible to imagine so many and nice coadaptations as we see in orchids being formed all by a chance blow.

I reply, Yes, perfectly impossible to imagine (and much the same by any number of chance blows).

So I turn the question back upon you. Is not the fact that the coadaptations are so nice next to a demonstration against their having been formed by chance blows at all, one or many?

Here lies, I suppose, the difference between us. When you bring me up to this point, I feel the cold chill.

I have been doing nothing but attend to my daily work, and had got so fagged that I really thought I was about to have softening of the brain, or some other breakdown. But a week of respite, caused by the death of an aged relative of my wife’s,--a dear old soul,--taking us away from here perforce, has set me up very nearly, and now after a week more comes my vacation, and we are off into the quiet country for three weeks.

A little legacy of about £2,000 to my wife comes in opportunely to relieve us of anxiety for the future. We have no children (which I regret only that I have no son to send to the war), and this with a little income, rather precarious, of about £200 a year would support us in our very simple way, if I were to throw up my place here. But I cannot do that yet....

Look at Impatiens flowers; see if the most fertile “precociously fertilized” ones ever get crossed!

I have asked in three directions for seeds of the Specularia perfoliata. Inclosed are depauperate specimens.

It is pretty to see honey-bees cross-fertilize Locust (Robinia), much as you say of broom. One of my students has been noticing the way bees act on Kalmia.

Now for my best thing for to-day.

An orchid which I missed last year, Platanthera flava, I knew would be curious, for I remembered a strong protuberance on base of labellum, on the median line. I have not time left to describe it now, having been sadly interrupted, but it is pretty,--equal to anything you have yet seen in British orchids. The process turns proboscis of insect either to right or left, where it will slip into an imperfect ring (as seen from above) or deep groove (as seen from before), in which lies the disk, not flat but coiled up, ready to catch proboscis. It is like the eye of a needle to receive the thread.

Perhaps I will send you, or print, a sketch[56] of the thing.

I am waiting for Gymnadenia tridentata to come on.

But the post hour has come.

July 21.

Your latest is of the 26th ult. You need not worry! It never wearies nor bores me to write to you, in the off-hand way I do. I enjoy our correspondence too much to consent to curtail or interrupt it. I learn from you, here in this remote part of the world, a thousand things which I should not otherwise know at all. And you stimulate my mind far more than any one else, except, perhaps, Hooker. So please do not make a fuss, but let me go on in my own fashion, and send me your fresh and stimulating letters, whenever you are in the mood of it. I am now in my vacation, and already, having idled and dawdled a week or two, I am as well and hearty as possible, and in the best of spirits. We should leave home this week for three weeks’ run in the country, but the sickness of my wife’s nephew, Lieutenant Jackson of Massachusetts Cavalry, will keep us awhile, as, though not alarming, it might take a bad turn, and so I may not be in the country for a week or two yet. We shall see....

I have strong and fresh Drosera rotundifolia, and it will now turn in its bristles and stick the viscid gland fast to a fly, binding him fast on all sides with liliputian cords. But it is awfully slow about it,--say three or four hours, and the next day the leaf sometimes becomes involute and folds over or curves around the insect; but what good? If the fly is not stuck fast in alighting, no movement takes place to hold him till he has got away if he ever could. However, it is an indication of what is so effectually done in Dionæa.

Rotary movement of end of tendril-bearing stems is common, is it not, and well-known?

Any notes you will give me to print in “Silliman’s Journal,” I shall always delight in.

I have been reading Owen’s Aye-aye paper. Well, this is rich and cool! Did I not tell you in the “Atlantic,” long ago, that Owen had a transmutation theory of his own! It is your Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet left out! But as you say now, you don’t so much insist on natural selection, if you can only have derivation of species. And Owen goes in for derivation on the largest scale. You may as well lovingly embrace! Oh, it is rare fun!...

I have been so far disappointed in getting no Gymnadenia tridentata. But I still hope for it. I must have it, indeed.

Boott’s address is good, chiefly very good. But he speaks of Wyman’s paper without having duly considered it. Wyman’s experiments are better than Pasteur’s, and the results opposite!

P. S.--Papers just in, or rather telegrams, that you in London were daily awaiting and expecting the capture of Washington, etc., and speculating as to whether Jeff Davis’s envoys from Washington might not be received at London as a fait accompli. A good deal of little-concealed joy, etc.

Oh, foolish people! When will you see that there is only one end to all this, and that the North never dreams of any other,--the complete putting down of the rebellion. And since 1863 began, it was clear that it would be attended with the annihilation of slavery.

Time was when we should have highly valued English appreciation of the right cause. We have long ceased to care or think about it.

We only wish you had the city of New York. But the sympathizers with secession and riot there have done their worst, and lost their game. The city of New York is the only part of our country which I am ashamed of; and the trouble there is that it is not American.

Enough; good-bye. A. G.

September 1.

Your fine, long letter of August 4th reached me up in the country, in my native region, in the centre of the State of New York, rusticating and enjoying ourselves mightily. We were among the people of a thriving region; a well-to-do set; no poverty near us for miles and miles, i. e., no hardship, except any that a drunken laborer might bring on his family; and I longed to take you out with us in our drives, that you might see a happy and comfortable country, more and more so every year, and perhaps a larger ratio of the population refined to a reasonable degree in feeling and life than I know of in any other part of the world.

I will consider about fantastic variation of pigeons. I see afar trouble enough ahead quoad design in nature, but have managed to keep off the chilliness by giving the knotty questions a rather wide berth. If I rather avoid, I cannot ignore the difficulties ahead. But if I adopt your view bodily, can you promise me any less difficulties?

If your Lythrum paper shall be at all equal in interest to that on Linum, it will be a gem.

As to tendrils, what are Hooker and Oliver (the latter a professor, too) about, and where have they lived not to know anything of them? Everybody must have seen, in Cucurbitaceæ and Passiflora, tendrils reaching out straight for a certain time, and then, if they reach nothing, coiling up from the end. Also the sweeping of stems....

P. S. [To the above?] Three numbers of Boston newspapers recently sent you, two by this mail (in which my good beau-père is again “spiking the English”), please to forward to Reuben Harvey, Esq., Limerick, Ireland.

You are quite out in supposing that hatred of England is increasing, or that there is the least desire to meddle with you, except in self-defense.

My own feelings were very sensitive at first, because I expected better things, and I then deferred much to British opinion. I now do neither, and nothing strikes me more than the smallness of mind and largeness of gullibility of the British people, as far as I can judge from their press (weeklies, quarterlies, and “Times”). But I do not suppose you will fight us because you dislike us; and so conversely. I suppose I do not see the papers which so abuse England, though I read influential and respectable papers; but from what I do see, I think we receive far more abuse and misrepresentation and unfair usage than we give.

As to the course of the war and policy of our country as to slavery, some day when you turn back to some early letter of mine you will see that I was a fairly good prophet; that the South might have delayed the abolition of slavery by giving up early in the conflict, but that every month of continued resistance hastened and insured the downfall of slavery. That is now doomed, and sure near to rapid death; quick in some places, slower in others, but sure.

Ill-usage of negroes--who make such good soldiers--will soon be unheard of, except with Irish. It will take some generations of American life to breed out the barbarian they bring to the country.

November 23.

The next best thing, of late, is the exposé of Lindsay and George Saunders (the Confederates) by Historicus.

I trust Historicus’ previous letters, in which he shows (about the same time my father-in-law’s articles on the subject reached England) that it is the duty of a country to see that armed or war vessels are not fitted out, quite irrespective of all municipal law, have produced their proper effect. Something has produced a great effect, and a great change in the idea of what it was incumbent on the government to do; and nothing can be more satisfactory than the views now taken; and the effect here is excellent. For we are sure that when the right notions once get a lodgment, as they have, England will faithfully carry them through. Lawyers whom I knew here were confident how the law would ultimately be laid down by your courts; but we greatly feared it would be done only after a few more such vessels had got to sea. All will go well now.

The newspaper I occasionally send you is a fair specimen of the influential part of the press here. Such articles as the “Times” likes to cite have far less effect here than you suppose in the determination of events.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

CAMBRIDGE, December 11, 1863.

MY DEAR ENGELMANN,--Our good old friend Von Martius writes me that on the 30th March next, he will reach his fiftieth anniversary of his doctorate. I dare say his friends will commemorate it in Germany. It occurs to me that it would be a good idea for some of us, his friends and correspondents, to compliment him upon the occasion. Suppose you draw up in German a letter of congratulation, etc., to be signed by yourself, Torrey, Sullivant, etc., and forward about the proper time. Send me, with your German circular letter to Martius, a translation in English....

Yes, I will let you work at botany when I guard you.[57] Your botanical work is far better than your politics. But you must swear the President’s oath, Proclamation and all!!

Martius is not a very remarkable botanist, but good; is a genial, philosophical soul (full of Plato, etc.), a good explorer, has worked up the Palms, etc., well, and is a wonderful man for the amount he knows on a vast number of different subjects,--philology, antiquities, philosophy, et id genus omne.

May 3, [1864].

... Spring is opening here, but late. From this to July 10, I am engaged in college every day in the week. Also am watching the herbarium building go up, the brick walls of which, if good weather, may be all up this week, and the roof put on next week.

Your circular letter to good Martius was very good, especially in its original German. Thanks....

Never mind if “Sagittaria graminea, Michaux,” is applicable to only one form. You had best keep the old name, the more so as that you propose, S. simplicifolia, is “not always correct.” We can’t let you change a name because you can improve it. Too many can and would play at that game, and less discreetly than you would, and then cite your example!

If Fendler gets tired of bush-clearing, and will come to me this fall, I will give him $500 a year as curator, lodgings, two rooms in gardener’s house, which I have reserved; and let him have say three days in the week for himself, if he wants them.

The people are determined to support and reëlect their excellent President Lincoln (what a noble letter that last of his), whether Frémont and the like make a coalition with copperheads or not. It is all the same to us. Lincoln will walk the course. God bless him!

Wright is coming home for a few months this summer.

TO CHARLES WRIGHT.

CAMBRIDGE, September 18, 1863.

What Don José affirms about coast and mountain vegetation being much the same is curious, unlikely, yet you seem to find it so. That bit of coast with all microphyllous and spiny vegetation is also curious.

I am glad you like him for being an abolitionist. Though not very much of an abolitionist myself, at the start, I hope I can fall in with, and welcome, the ways of Providence, when Providence takes the matter in hand, and say Amen....

Well, you are doing well in botanizing, and should finish up Cuban botany while you are at it. And on your return, you and Grisebach should join teams, and do up Cuban botany in a full memoir. You are right to stay till next spring. You are happy in Cuba; you would not be so here. Things in the United States do not go to suit you at all. “Things is working,” and in the right way,--but the end must be the total suppression of the rebellion,--the exile or punishment of rebel leaders, the return of the masses to their duty, and they will put things straight. Just what is now going on in Tennessee will go on elsewhere, I suppose. I know only one man in Cambridge that you could talk secesh to. We can correspond very well, and keep cool. But if we were together, during the war, we should get into a row at once. It could not be otherwise....

When the Union is restored (which it is to be, of course, when the rebellion is put down) those who do not love us well enough to resume their duties and privileges have only to take themselves off to some country they like better. The United States of America belongs to loyal Americans. After the war the country will prosper wonderfully. And the South will get to be something.

December 1.

Things move on.

“The mills of the Gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine.” Wait in Cuba a year longer, and you may return to a country in which slavery, having tried to get more, has lost all, and as a system is defunct, to the lasting benefit of all parties.

You might now revisit your old Texan haunts, under General Banks’s protection.

The November elections show a united North. Peace democracy has made its issue, and is dead. The reëlection of Lincoln by acclamation seems probable, supported by moderate men of all sorts, the extremes of the opposing parties alone going against him....

Merry Christmas to you.

January 21, 1864.

By the steamer of Saturday, which takes this, a good young fellow, Mr. Kennedy, a member of our Senior class, goes to Cuba, to look after business of his father, and, when he can, to botanize, only four or five weeks, that is, in vacation. He is very fond of botany, and bids fair to be a botanist some day, if he does not take to money-making instead....

This war, we think, will be pretty much over next summer; and then, back in the Union, with slavery pretty much nowhere, by the hearty wish of a majority of the people, we may expect a career of prosperity and real advance of the South, such as it has never known. At least we hope so.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, December 25, 1863.

For ourselves, your letter found us here just on the eve of our month’s holiday, a trip to Lake George, and thence to my natal region, in the most beautiful (and the most English-looking) part of the State of New York.... My wife was well enough to do her small part in a great fair held in Boston for the United States Sanitary Commission (which has kept the ladies very busy for the last six months), which has just closed, having brought the net proceeds of about $125,000 (it turns out $140,000) for the relief of suffering.